On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in the year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.

Not many hundreds of miles away from the house where I was born, they were picking up the men who rotted in the rainy ditches among the dead horses and ruined seventy-fives, in a forest of trees without branches along the river Marne.

My father and mother were captives in that world, knowing they did not belong with it or in it, and yet unable to get away from it. They were in the world and not of it–not because they were saints, but in a different way: Because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa has said that the coup is legal. This despite the fact that the President who was deposed, Manuel Zelaya, was the legally elected leader of Honduras.

The reason the Cardinal seems to support the coup are the political differences between him and President Zelaya. Cardinal Maradiaga says that Mr. Zalaya is a backer of leftist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

The support of the Catholic Church for this right-wing coup recalls how Pope John Paul II and the Church attempted to end the Liberation Theology movement in Latin America. Liberation Theology sought to address the needs of the poor and those in need of help in Latin America who have often gone unacknowledged by the Church. Please click here for facts about Liberation Theology.

When will the Church advocate on a consistent basis for the rule of law and for those who most need help and care in life?